McDonald’s, the world-famous fast-food chain best known for its golden arches and Big Macs, bills itself as a leader “in environmental conservation.”¯
A few weeks ago I walked into a McDonald’s restaurant for the first
time in a year and ordered the new sweet tea drink. To my surprise the
drink comes in a styrofoam cup.

Styrofoam is also known as polystyrene, which is made from styrene. According to the Environmental Justice Network,
styrene is “known to indiscriminately attack tissue and the nervous
system”¯ and is absorbed through the skin, lungs and intestines.

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Polystyrene is not recycled in most U.S. cities, and takes 900 years
to break down in a landfill. Petroleum, the substance that fuels our
life, is used in the process to make polystyrene products.

An article posted on the Sustainable is Good blog asks an important question about McDonald’s choice to use Styrofoam cups for its sweet tea drink:

“While
most disposable fast food cups including those made of paper are not
easily recyclable, McDonalds choice of a styrofoam cup for a new
product promotion is significant. Does the company consider styrofoam a
better option than paper?”¯

McLibel trial

In
the 1990s two London Greenpeace activists were sued by McDonald’s for
their anti-McDonald’s campaign. The case was dubbed the McLibel Trial.
Environmental reporter John Vidal wrote a book about the trial called
McLibel Trial. In the book he cites an American environmental
specialists testimony about the “problems associated with styrofoam,”¯
which include “toxic wastes, damage to the ozone layer and smog
pollution, the leaching of styrene from the packing into the foods
packaged in the foam”¦.and the serious disposal problems.”¯

Vidal
also cited testimony from another defense witness, Dr. Erik Millstone.
Millstone “testified that the International Agency for the Research on
Cancer had classified styrene oxide as probably carcinogenic to
humans.”¯ Interestingly, McDonald’s toxicology expert agreed that
“styrene can migrate from polystyrene packaging into food.”¯

McToxics campaign

During
the late 1980s in the U.S. a Vermont environmental group began a
campaign to get McDonald’s to stop selling its food in styrofoam
packages. A nationwide picket of McDonald’s restaurants occurred as a
result of the Vermont group’s campaign. McDonald’s launched its own
campaign where it made claims such as “foam packaging is good for landfill, it aerates the soil.”¯ In November 1990 McDonald’s announced it would begin to phase out the majority of its styrofoam packaging.

Dialogue with McDonald’s

On McDonald’s Corporate Responsibilty blog
someone commented about the use of styrofoam cups for sweet tea. The
person asked, “What about all of the styrofoam you use? That is totally
not recyclable. What are you doing about these things?”¯ The person’s
questions received the following response:

We
continue to study the environmental impacts of our packaging decisions,
from the materials we use (including sourcing of raw materials and
options for recycled materials), to the design of our packaging, to the
manner it is disposed. We have tools developed by experts that help us
determine the environmental impacts of all these aspects.

Unfortunately, recycling in the food service industry is very
difficult due to the presence of food remains. But we are making
progress on the other areas I mentioned above - sourcing better raw
materials, reducing packaging weight, and utilizing recycled content
when we can.

Cups present special challenges, whether they are
plastic or paper (by the way, there really is no such thing as a 100%
paper cup, since most cups have some sort of coating, usually a poly or
wax coating), but nonetheless we are always studying alternatives.

I became irate after reading the response to the concerned customer, and posted my own comment:

Is
it environmentally sustainable to serve sweet tea in a cup made of
polystyrene? Most areas in the U.S. do not have facilities to recycle
polystyrene. Polystyrene takes 900 years to break down in a landfill.
Paper cups generally end up in landfills, but at least they are
biodegradable.

I received the following response to my comment:

We
do consider lifecycle impacts, including the eventual disposal impacts,
in our packaging analysis. When it comes to packaging ending up in a
landfill, no form of packaging is truly biodegradable, since modern
landfills are designed to limit degredation. In addition to lifecycle
impacts, we also consider other factors like the total weight of the
product which lessens the impact due to shipment. We continue to look
at ways to balance the environment with the functional needs of our
customers, recycling infrastructure, and supply availability.

According to the University of British Columbia,
it only takes paper products two to five months to break down in a
landfill. However, as the response to the McDonald’s customer’s
questions pointed out, fast food paper cups are coated with either wax
or polyethylene, and can take a year or more to break down.

The
polystyrene-based cups that sweet tea is served in take 900 years to
break down. What is better: a few months or almost a millennium? The
total weight of polystyrene has no bearing on its impact to the
environment. Very little polystyrene products are recycled. If
McDonald’s truly considered lifestyle impacts it would use only paper
cups.